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Technology

Look, On The Road! It's Super Plow 76

Posted by michael from the my-what-a-big-plow-you-have dept.
SEWilco writes: "The Minneapolis Star Tribune points out there's a high-tech snowplow being road tested around the country. It uses differential GPS, radar, joystick-controlled plow, rumble seat, and a heads-up display for zero-visibility driving. CNN and Nando/AP had related reports. I wonder if they'll automate a plow conga line." These will still be useful for a few more years as global warming advances...
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Look, on the Road! It's Super Plow More

Look, on the Road! It's Super Plow

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  • It seems like it wouldn't take much effort to make these devices capable of being controlled remotely. This could be useful if the drivers were snowed into their homes.

  • Fun and Games (Score:3)

    by whydna ( 9312 ) <whydna@hotmCHICAGOail.com minus city> on Sunday February 11, 2001 @12:45AM (#440765)
    It's all fun and games until somebody loads Quake into the HUD and starts running over cars by accident...

    -andy
  • I would be thinking something more along the lines of PacMan, and with that neat little joystick alreay in the cab, why not... Just gotta get the guys that paint the lines to make every 100th one just a wee bit bigger to add to the atmosphere.
  • Lets port quake3 to it, then your job would be way fun its even got a net connection if you screw with the dish a little, that would Own fragging and deicing :)
  • damn how did you know i was going to do that :)
  • Northern Ohio roads can definitely benefit with these new plow trucks. I like the warning system that warns the driver of vehicles trying to pass.

    I have a feeling that in the near future, we may see on-board systems such as the HUD become standard in all plow trucks, and even in other vehicles.
  • Bonus points if they toss in a studded "Mr. Plow" jacket with purchase!

  • IR camera (Score:5)

    by Perdo ( 151843 ) on Sunday February 11, 2001 @01:07AM (#440771) Homepage Journal
    got to get that thing an IR vidio camera projecting on the head up display. Great it can stay in the lane during a white out but can it see the hot little bodies of children playing in the snow? Every two or three years a child in alaska (who has usually tunneled into a existing snow berm to make a snow fort) is covered over when the plow comes through. somtimes they are found immediately, somtimes they are assumed to have been abducted but are found 20 yards from their house when spring thaw ("breakup") comes... Seems silly until you ask anyone who has grown up in the snow how many times they have had hazardous experiences with plows. Personally I have had a plow traveling at 45-50 mph throw a great gout of slush at me that burried me up to the waist. Un-fun soaked to the bone and trapped when it's 25 dedrees, dark and windy. And if they don't care about children in the road, a 2000 pound bull moose will rip the blade right off a plow. Just ask the Alaska Rail Road that in one 360 mile trip has hit as many as 17 moose.

  • global warming issues (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    These will still be useful for a few more years as global warming advances...

    More specifically,

    • Next year, these will be used to carry snow from Minnesota to Texas, to refresh people during heat waves.
    • A year later, these will be used to carry Canadian snow to refresh Minnesota.
    • A year later, these will be used to carry Canadian water to refresh Minnesota.
    • A year later, these will be used to carry Canadian dry sand to refresh Minnesota.
    • A year later, these will be used to carry Canadian molten lead to refresh Minnesota.
    • A year later, the whole damn plow will evaporate to refresh whatever is remaining.

  • Slashdot the Hizbollah! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Everybody click on that link!

    Let's see if we can get the official Hizbollah site Slashdotted so that they'll get mad at Rob!

  • I think there is a Caddy model that comes standard with a HUD.

    -

  • We had 20 operators drive this truck with curtains on all the windows -- totally blind. They each drove a four-mile course with hairpin curves, right-angle curves and an S-curve, and we had only one small incident...

    ...when a small boy ran across the road and got run over by the plow. He wasn't on the map and kids are notorious for their small radar profile. They're practically invisible!
  • It's not fun cruising down the road and suddenly it's a total white out because there is a plow in front of you.
    That's why you are supposed to stay back 200 feet or so from the plow. It may be slow but its safe.

    -

  • Re:Lack of moderation (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Interesting. I'm curious though, how do you define a "blatant troll"? I truly wonder if there is a reasonable (and fair defintion). For example, is a post which upsets or makes the majority uncomfortable to be considered a "troll"?

    I beleive that a good portion of posts marked as "troll" are merely opinions that are different than the majority. Personally I'm troubled by a "moderation" system based on "votes". By definition minority opinions are subject to supression under such a system.

  • If only Barney had one of these, he wouldn't have needed Homer to come rescue him.
  • For some reason I couldn't even read the article, before it immediately occurred to me what a cool fucking band name High Tech Super Plow would be. I dunno why. Probably too many Guatamalan Insanity Peppers when I was younger.

  • Why following a plow without GPS can be dangerous (Score:5)

    by weave ( 48069 ) on Sunday February 11, 2001 @02:29AM (#440780) Journal
    A few years ago in Delaware (during the infamous Blizzard of 96), a plow was pushing its way up US 301 with a trail of cars following it. Well, the driver apparently lost track of the road and started plowing a trail into a farm field.

    Cars behind him started to get stuck and the truck eventually sunk into the field too, before any of them realized they weren't on the road!

    (Note that it rarely snows here and when it does it's only a few inches. That day saw 24 inches drop in 24 hours. The state doesn't have the equipment to handle that kind of snow. It was great fun!)

  • eris would be proud. Or proust depending. Either way, these snowplows are cool. If they ever get the HUD into cars, I think driving drunk would be a bit safer. Any thoughts? How hard would it be to make a car drive by itself if it can already see?


    Fight censors!
  • and that goes double for me... oh, and make mine a double!
  • I would want a Plow King jacket! Besides, are you licensed and bonded by the state?
  • and i suppose not taking it will? get used to it folks, we've soiled the nest... earth can heal its wounds over time, given that we don't pile the shit higher and deeper upon it... ever heard of marshes (wetlands) for example? they're nature's sewage treatment plants, you bloody idiots, and they're disappearing due to development (housing, etc). and on and on and on and *OOPS* no more 'on and on'! go ahead, make the world a hell for your children's children, what the fuck do YOU care? you'll have had YOUR fun and you'll be dead by the time your great-grandkids have to pick up the tab, you bloody fools.
  • hey i am on the beast coast of the OOSAH and i am awake, i think... so there! i'm amurrikkkan, dammit
  • That's true. Here in Ohio it was actually warm out on Friday. I went out at night, and when I went to my car in the morning, a little flurry was starting, it was below freezing again! This is the second or third time it has varied that much in the last week.

  • This sucks. (Score:3)

    by BilldaCat ( 19181 ) on Sunday February 11, 2001 @03:35AM (#440787) Homepage
    Soon, when we have heated roads, super high-tech snow plows, and rock salt that works 10 times as fast as we have now, we'll miss one important thing.

    Snow days.

    I'm glad I'm out of school, because if I was a kid, I'd be bitter. My kids will look at me like I'm nuts when I'm old, look outside, and say stuff like "In my day, we didn't have to go to school in this kind of weather!".

    Bah, snow plows.

  • global warming (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Remember, one of the effects of global warming is not that everyone gets to add 5 degrees to their average temperature. Global warming will also mean more extreme weather. Yes, that also means more cold weather for those of us in the interior of continents, where more extreme weather is generally found. That means colder winters at times. This year the average temperature for December was 9 degrees where I live. Last year it was either 19 or 29, I forget. That's according to our heating bill summary. We also had record snow amounts.

    In addition, as temperatures rise ever so slightly, it means that the air will be able to hold more moisture, so snow fall will probably increase.

  • Oh, come on, that was hardly misused.
  • It's nice to own a Caddy with a HUD.

    Still, I have trouble driving rentals now. I keep hitting things when I'm out of town.

    It's not so bad when I turn on the headlights.
  • we have bulldust ploughs... no, really...

    rr

  • After living in the snow belt for 20 years, I have reached the conclusion that the main problem with snowplowing is that they destroy mailboxes. Every year I have had to battle to keep a place to accept snail mail open, but to have it destroyed/buried by snow plows. At first I had a standard mailbox. That lasted until middle of December when it was crushed by the plow into a flat piece of sheet metal. Then I got a replacement plastic one. That took a few hits and sprung back, until a serious whack sent it off down the road somewhere not to be found until the thaw.

    The next step was to teather the mailbox with a length of rope so I could recover it after being sheared off. This worked until the plow took out the support arm, at which point I gave up for the year.

    The following year I had a friend make a contraption that included a pivoting arm on a shear pin. This worked for almost half a year until we got hit with a big one and the snow bank built up to 14 feet high.

    Anyway, what I REALLY want to know is if all the fancy gizmos on this thing can detect MAILBOXES!!!


    MOVE 'ZIG'.
  • In my day, we didn't have no fancy smancy super charged plowtrucks. No sir. We'd bundle up and head out into the freezing cold after eating a hot cup of grits armed with only a snow shovel and strong farm workin' muscles.

    those where the days when a man proved the size of his wanger to how much snow he pushed. And let me tell ya, I was a humg dinger of a pusher! My wife Edna even says: "Wow, look at all the snow he pushed, that's some wanger!" to all her friends. Workin' like that gets its rewardin'!

    Now we got these big ol' super tecknological trucks that do all the pushin' for us. Edna's now thinkin' 'bout leavin' me and tellin' all her friends that those trucks have big ol' wanged drivers operatin' 'em.

    So now it's just me and muh sheep here on the farm. And on some cold lonely ol' nights, you'll still see me out pushin' that snow with just muh farm workin' muscles and my trusty ol' shovel. That is, unless I get plowed over muh self by some wanger size provin' young wipper-snapper!

    A schizophrenic is never lonely.
  • Once, the dinosaurs roamed the earth. Siberia, Northern Alberta, Scandihoovia, all were tropical environments. High humidity, high temperature, year-round.

    Since that time, the average temperature on the surface of the planet Earth has dropped some 14 degrees Celsius. We must put a stop to this horrifying trend before we all freeze to death! I *IMPLORE* you to leave all of your doors and windows open in the winter while continuing to heat your house to stave off the certainty of a new ice age!

    Either our species is going to go extinct soon, or it will go extinct later. Who really gives a damn about how many million years (Written history only extends back some six thousand years, remember) difference there is between those two epochs?

    --
  • The blind shalt lead the blind!!!!

    --

  • Make your next mailbox out of #1 steel sheet, and have it stand on a post made out of a 8 foot length of 132 to 164 pounds (to the yard) rail (available at your friendly neighboorhood railroad yard) set into a 3 foot diameter by 5 foot deep hole filled with concrete.

    No snowplough (nor any redneck kid with baseball bat mounted on a speeding car) will ever interfere with your mail delivery thereafter...

    --

  • Actually, the Earth has often been warmer than now. We haven't yet returned to the temperature before the last Ice Ages. It's fun watching people trying to prove that Evil Humans are causing temperature changes, except when people with power take them seriously.
  • As someone who used to do a LOT of GIS work (http://www.google.com/search?q=GIS) I can give you a good reason why it won't work:

    we don't know exactly where the roads are located

    Part of this is that which mathematical geoid we base the earth's sphere varies from area to area, but the real reason is that the engineers I came across tended to use CAD. CAD knows exactly how large things are, and where they are in relation to one another, but cares nothing about where the something is located on the surface of the earth.

    GIS, on the other hand, cares lots about where things are located, but has tended to be less exacting about the inches and fractional inches.

    A friend of mine had the task of putting one city's CAD maps together into a coherent GIS system. He regularly uncovered 30-100' errors where these exacting CAD maps touched edges. Even a 30' error is more than the width of a lane of traffic.
  • I live in FL, so we (understandably) don't get snow days, but I'd like to see them invent something that'll take away "hurricane days," those wonderful days when they cancel school in order for you and your family to board up your house...

  • My old boss grew up in the Netherlands, and he was always had a good story or two to tell.

    He'd always complain about how our roads (in Detroit) were always full of potholes while his roads back home were always in much better condition. In the Netherlands, roads are made of a porus material that actually lets rain seep into & below the road surface. In light traffic it can actually be raining outside while the road surface remains dry! So I told him,

    "That's stupid! It could never work! Once that
    rain seeps into the road and freezes,
    it's going to make the whole roadway crumble.

    He then explained to me how they overcame that problem. Instead of relying so much on snow plows and dump trucks filled with rock salt, they instead have special tanker trucks that spray a special salt water mixture on the roads surface. The salt water works great on these special roads because:

    The liquid is usually warmer than the freezing point of snow.

    The snow melts much faster this way

    The liquid keeps the snow from refreezing below the road surface

    The roads are much safer since the roads stay drier

    Snow plows are needed less, so their are fewer potholes caused by the blades

    Don't get me wrong, This is great technology, (robot lawnmower anyone?) but snow plows are not neccessarily the best solution to the problem (which is to have an inexpensive way to improve driver's safety). Frankly, I'm a little surprised that nobody has developed some sort of "lawn sprinkler" system integrated into the road to automatically recirulate a salt solution. This could work great on high traffic expressways where there is little room to move snow.
    Just my $.02

  • Actually, I think you'd have to have a license from Monsanto to plow that snow...
  • There's a certain amount of error inherent in GPS location, even now that the government isn't deliberately introducing it. But aside from that, what's to stop highway departments from sending GPS-equipped cars down the major roads to produce more accurate maps? Or maybe I'm not completely understanding the problem.
  • Yeah, so Europe does it different.

    Problem is, take the great state of South Dakota, (just west of Minnesota for you geographically handicapped readers).
    We have 85,000 miles of road in an area of 77,123 square miles. A population of about 750,000 lives in that total area.

    The Netherlands on the other hand, has just over 15,000,000 people in 34,000 square miles. In other words, they have about 500 people per square mile, whereas we have 9.7 on average.

    So when we go to plow our roads, it's going to take a hell of a long time. And that fancy permeable road surface would be the biggest frozen death trap on all the world by the time the plows got there.

    It works good in Europe where you have a monstrous tax base and people don't mind getting hosed on their taxes to buy a really expensive road, but here that just doesn't fly.

    Further, snow plows don't cause potholes. They cause blade damage -- mostly scrapes and nicks out the the driving surface. Potholes are caused by overweight trucks and pooly compacted subsurface fill, aggrivated by freeze-thaw cycles which degrades the material density.

  • This isn't going to work in our vast countryside, but maybe in the cities this could be used.

    I think the other post explains how potholes aren't caused by plows.
  • How cold does it get in the Netherlands? For that matter, how cold does it get in Detroit?

    Remember, most winters we (Minneapolis) get a few days a year where the temp hits -25F (about -30C). I don't care how much salt you put into that water -- you're not going to do anything to keep it from freezing hard. If anything, Global Warming is just going to make that worse...
  • This high tech snow plow has been roaming the roads since last winter. Wow. Why is it recently every news story that has been posted has been old news. I've heard about it at least in one other spot ages ago.

    New slogan for Slashdot.

    Slashdot. Old news for Nerds.

  • I live in Minneapolis and go to Minneapolis Southwest High School (where the paper's article is from, too). What you said is already happening without these new snow plows. A few years ago, we got 1-2 snow days off a year. Now (10th grade) we haven't had a snow day in 3 years I think. 3 years ago the govenor, not Jesse Ventura, but the one before him (Arne Carlson) was nice and gave the day off because it was like -40 F. But we haven't had a day off for snow since 6th grade. It might be because they have more snowplows or a more efficient system or something... I'm not sure. The annoying thing about these is that they plow all the busy streets, but leave these huge piles of snow at intersections that you get your car stuck in. It also used to suck walking down sidewalks because those were buried. But then I got some $70 military boots and it doesn't even matter now.

    Anyways, these will probably eliminate those annoying snow piles on non-snow route streets. I hope Minneapolis gets a system like that guy said they have in Holland... potholes are so annoying. Slush, those plow snow piles, and potholes are the most annoying things about winter driving. Oh, and getting that salt on your car in annoying too. So in conclusion, winter sucks.

  • How does the snowplow driver get to work in the morning?

    --

  • I hear that. I blame it mostly on the yuppies in Seattle. The ones who cry save the tree's but have probably have never seen a tree.

    Remember when Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines blew half of the mountain skyward and pumped more garbage into the air than the entire human race has ever done. And I ask, what effect did that have? nill!!! It lowered temps a bit, but had no real dramatic effect. I've been told that bits of the mountain are still floating around. That's cool.

  • Frankly, I'm a little surprised that nobody has developed some sort of "lawn sprinkler" system integrated into the road to automatically recirulate a salt solution.

    Here in Salt Lake City, Utah (USA) they have done just that, only on a very small (~200m) stretch of freeway. It's most likely too expensive to maintain such a system, when a truck with a plow is cheap. Maybe as fuel prices go up, these systems will look a lot better. Currently, this system is in this one location because it's on a sharp curve, a grade, and a 65mph speed limit.. and with Utah drivers 75mph+ in snow is very common.


    --
  • Yep, I go through that curve on my way to work. Everything else had snow on it this morning but that curve. Sure works good, they should start using it elsewhere.


    Enigma
  • It's true that in conditions described by Global Warming the average temperature of the earth does increase. However, the real damaging effects of Global Warming are brought about by the increased range of temperatures experienced during a year. I.e. the summer high's are hotter, and the winter lows are colder.
  • we have bulldust ploughs... no, really...

    Bulldust? Sounds like a drug or something.

    Only in Los Angeles and Miami do you need plows to push drugs around. Nowhere else has that kind of quantity. Well, maybe Amsterdam...


    --
    ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US

  • There's a certain amount of error inherent in GPS location, even now that the government isn't deliberately introducing it. But aside from that, what's to stop highway departments from sending GPS-equipped cars down the major roads to produce more accurate maps? Or maybe I'm not completely understanding the problem.

    Even during times when SA is turned on, you can get an accurate GPS reading by making your own custom GPS devices, and forcing them both to use the same satellites. This is probably as simple as a software tweak. One of them is at a fixed location on the ground at which you know the precise map coordinates. Then you just tweak your results.

    There are bigger problems, though. First of all, with civilian GPS, even if you stand still for fifteen minutes, you're not getting an accurate reading, and not because of SA; They just don't use the same techniques as the military stuff. When the military comes up with something better, we'll get a higher level of precision as a hand-me-down.

    In any case, the plow uses triangulation for a fixed radar source, which they know the location of. Then they can solve the issue with the lack of accuracy on the GPS. Even this doesn't solve the problem one poster brought up about the GIS road maps being inaccurate, but I don't think that's such an issue. You can solve that problem by snapping to the road. In other words, you have an inertial tracker (three sensitive gyros would work here) and you keep track of where you're going. You use the GPS as a sanity check, and in conjunction with the radar tracking added on, you can find out where you are within a couple feet. Then you simply keep track of what road you're on, what turns you're probably making, and you snap to the nearest road which you're probably on. The odds of the system thinking you're on some other road are fairly slim (though not insignificant) which is why you need to keep a human driver in the cab.

    I personally think that they should be using short-wave radar to find the borders of the tarmac, though, and adding that to the data they collect. With a seriously short wave radar, you could even home in on the Botts' Dots [berkeley.edu] (I'd have linked to Caltrans (California DOT), but their site is "Destination Net Unreachable" at the moment) and make a more educated guess as to where the lines on the road are supposed to be. Of course, those are most common in California, and (as the document notes) are not usually used in places where you remove snow from the road. Still, it's an idea.


    --
    ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US

  • How does the snowplow driver get to work in the morning?

    He doesn't, he just lives in the plow. Also installed in the new model are a bunk, an RV toilet, a microwave, and a minifridge. Updated models may also have a jacuzzi.


    --
    ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US

  • Sounds like Ed Crankshaft was driving that snowplow. The best mailbox I've ever seen was attached to a huge boulder by this stiffened chain that held it up. To hit the mailbox you'd have had to hit the 400lb boulder first.
  • joke hum ever hear of a snowmobile??? /joke They are in the plow before the roads are bad

    on a serious note, i live in a small town called Mayer Mn, 55360 *plug this into map.yahoo.com* which is 2 miles south of the road this truck drives down, if you read the article it states this year they are testing it between St Bonnie, and Hutchinson, Mn this is one of the worse roads in the state not only for the amount of drifting and lack of visibility, but also for the amount of traffic that flows down on it. up until this year the plows have been pulled off this road during extreme weather because A. the plows can't keep up with the amount of drifting and B they can't see the road/cars.

    i've seen the truck in action hell for 10k worth of tax dollars its worth it.

    sig
    Fear me for I drive hwy 7

  • High Tech Snow Plow Trucks

    If you live in the Midwestern United States, you've already experienced several winter snow storms this year. Local road commissions each have their own maintenance jurisdictions, and where the borders end, they stop plowing. Wouldn't it be great if these agencies could pool their limited resources? The Southeastern Michigan Snow and Ice Management (SEMSIM) project is attempting to do just that by using technology to manage snow plow operations over multiple jurisdictions.

    SEMSIM Technologies include:
    • Tracking the real-time location of snow plow trucks using Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. Agencies can assign nearby trucks to border roads of another jurisdiction to improve efficiency.
    • Monitoring the air and pavement temperatures using truck mounted sensors
    • Determining if the truck "underbody" scraper is down by using truck mounted sensors
    • Calculating the amount of salt spread using a computerized salt spreader
    • Tracking the real-time location of the trucks using a map-based computer screen
    Project Partners:
    • Road Commission for Oakland County (RCOC)
    • Wayne County Department of Public Services
    • City of Detroit
    • Road Commission of Macomb County
    • Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART)
    Project Goals:
    • Increase the safety of motorists in a snow storm
    • Protect the environment by regulating salt use
    • Respond quickly to changing weather conditions
    • Improve winter maintenance efficiency by working cooperatively with other road agencies
  • But it doesn't address the biggest problem I have observed here in Indianapolis. It's a very simple one:
    The plow/salt trucks are put out on the road at the first prediction of snow accumulation. Once the snow starts, they are forbidden to allow the plow blade to drop with a foot of the surface of the road, and they are not allowed to drop salt. Once it starts snowing heavily, and piling up on the roads, the plows leave the roads, probably because it's dangerous.

    The high-tech plows are neat, but in Indy we need the city and its drivers to learn how to push the snow off the roads, and to drop salt on the icy patches.

    --
  • The answer is to get a mailbox that can take a beating. Mount it on the ground far from the road and extend the actual box to the road using a big horizontal arm that can swing when it is hit. I've seen these types survive for decades in Minnesota
  • SuperPlow a rescate [yesterdayland.com]!


    (hmmm www.supercow.com is actually a dairy's website)

  • Did anyone else notice this on the Heads-Up-Display page:

    A tombstone shape indicates the position of another vehicle or an obstacle.

    Tombstone??? Are they trying to tell us something?

  • I don't suppose they could, say, run the plow with GIS-tracking turned on, during a visible-road day, eh?

    I daresay that's the best thing to do, anyway: drive the actual road and record the actual data. Then there can be *no* errors, by curvature, user error, math typos or other.

    --
  • Trust me man, you don't want salt sprayed all over your roads... certain places in Canada salt as well and it as well as killing trees and plants along the side of the road it eats your car away before your eyes.

    You will watch the body of your car disintigrate while the engine is fine.
  • The truck uses DGPS and navigation databases that were created specifically for that purpose (I work with these guys).

    Having to create these databases, however, can be a lot of work. Other systems being developed include metal strips implated in the road (used in California, but not in Minnesota because of temperature extremes) and a magnetic striping tape on the lanes.

    The truck is being developed by the Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute [umn.edu] at the University of Minnesota. Some more information is here. [umn.edu]

  • I have my doubts that a heat-sensing video camera would be able to see much heat in a whiteout. I would think that the snow would absorb an increadible amount of that radiation.
  • Wow... you seem pretty pissed off at the snow plows.
    Your probably right... it would be better if we left the roads covered in snow and ice. Let the cars worry about it when they get run over.
    The truth is- there are dangers that exist in the world, be it snow plows or trains. Its not the job of everyone else to make the world safe for children, its the job of the childs parent to teach them the dangers of the world.
  • Does it have enhanced IR vision,self-contained atmosphere, highly adjustable wheels mounts for overcoming terrain, particle beam weapons to aid in clearance, and a small nuclear plant?

    NO? not much of a HiTech plow is it?

    Long Live FASA's BattleTech.


  • Un-fun soaked to the bone and trapped when it's 25 degrees,

    Mmm. In Europe that would be considered nice and warm. Celsius, my hero!

  • It can get as cold as that in the Netherlands, but typically it will not be any colder than -15C (5 F) in mid winter. This year it was hardly any colder than -5C (23 F).
  • 100K a pop is a bit much for just any road, but this would be really nice at airports. Especially the 10K computer-aided navigation thingy.

    At one little airport I know they very carefully scraped the snow, ice and, what was that, oh dear, the runway lights. That was about $50K worth of damage and a very upset airport manager. Good nav like these have have would have prevented the inadvertent destruction of the visual navaids.

  • I don't know about US maps, however, most modern surveying for roads is done using fixedpoints (benchmarks) generated from multipass GPS. The original features may not be so well surveyed, but the location of the road is well known (down to a couple of cm or so). Same goes for stuff like street furniture that gets put in with the road.

    The main issue is that inside a GIS there is a lot of old data which is only slowly being replaced as stuff gets resurveyed. Major roads are worked on quite often so the surveying tends to be better than most. The location of that, there hill is another issue, dating back to the guy with the optical theo in 1890 or so.

    In the UK, we wre blessed for many years by an excellent set of 50" to the mile maps. In the 70s with the advent of computerised plotting, it became quite apparent that the series had a problem. The original plates were destroyed in WW2 and new plates were made from paper. Paper is not very good at dimensional stability. It turned out that many things were off by a few metres. Doesn't sound much until you realise that the whole of the land registry from 1945 to 1970 was based on bad data.

    However 30 metre errors as reported here are basically unheard of for us.

  • Speaking of "When I Was a Kid" stories, we had some good ones, growing up in Alaska. The best: Moose Days. Moose are skittish creatures. So, if there was one in your front yard in the morning, you didn't have to go to school that day.

    Some days, I still pray for moose, even here in Boston,

    ~k
  • I don't know if it is the same technology used in California, but there is a test system, for guiding snowplows, buried along side the centerline of a portion of Minnesota State Highway 19 near Winthrop, Gibbon and Fairfax.
  • are as dumb as a box of rocks... and my youth was OVER by the time Johnson swore his first oath of office, after Kennedy was shot... note that i NEVER said a damn thing about global warming? no, you didn't notice? I THOUGHT NOT, you fool. some resources are finite, and some aspects of the earth, such as wetlands, are immeasurably important to earth's stasis IN WAYS THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH GLOBAL WARMING.
  • Winter ? Time to close Windows(tm)
  • ...a Beowulf cluster of these?

    No, really.

  • ob monty python quote:

    When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. And that one sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Son, the strongest castle in all of England.
  • I cannot dispute the environmental damage caused by salt (I simply just don't know).

    However, I thought you might find it interesting to know that not all road salt will rust out your car. Many communites here in michigan have considered using a very expensive (I believe 4x regular cost) type of salt that does not contribute to rust.

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